Fires and burn scars in the Amur region, Eastern Russia

  • Credit

    Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

This series of images acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) shows the Amur River region in eastern Russia and the effects of large fires on the landscape. The true- and false-color images from May 7, 2002 and June 4, 2002, show numerous fires (red dots) as well as burn scars left by previous fires. In the false color images, vegetation appears bright green, and burned areas appear reddish-brown. The Amur River is the dark line running diagonally across the image, and the north-south running river is the Zeya. It’s interesting to note that a particularly large burn scar that is prominent to the southeast of center in the first images is barely discernible in the image on June 4. The Amur Region supports a lot of agriculture, and it is likely that these fires were set to prepare land for farming or grazing.

Metadata

  • Sensor

    Terra/MODIS

  • Visualization Date

    2002-06-04